Dumping Jacinta Allan would make sense if the Coalition was the real threat to Labor. It isn’t

There are two ways in which Australian politics is starting to resemble the final seasons of Game of Thrones.

The first is watching familiar characters – what’s left of them – struggling to adjust to the reality that Pauline Hanson’s army of the dead is real, on the march and coming for them all.

This week, we’ve had an acknowledgment from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese that economic resentment, rather than ideological adherence, is turning ordinary people into blue-eyed grievance zombies as well as an offer from Liberal Party president Tony Abbott to keep directing preferences to One Nation while it devours what remains of his party’s vote.

The second is an uneasy feeling that the national conversation, like the later instalments of the GOT TV series that had outpaced the writings of George RR Martin, doesn’t have much of a script to show where things are heading from one episode to the next.

Spoiler alert: the Trumpification of middle America, rise of Reform UK and stunning electoral results of hard-right, populist parties in Italy, France and Germany provide a clue. So do this week’s riots in Belfast after graphic images of a horrific attempted murder by a Sudanese asylum seeker were passed around by anti-immigration agitators.

In our little play here in Victoria, a familiar story is unfolding in the Labor caucus. This is the scene where less than honourable members of the Queen’s guard, having knocked back a tankard too many in the members’ dining room of parliament, start openly musing about putting someone else on the throne.

This is what happened in parliament last Thursday night, at the end of a long and frustrated sitting week, when the conversation turned to the long political winter facing Labor MPs who, not that long ago, saw in their futures an accumulation of land, titles and use of chauffeur-driven cars.

It is a conversation that has been running hot and cold for more than a year, driven by Labor folk inside and outside parliament who think Jacinta Allan needs to go if the government is to have any chance of retaining power after November 28.

If Victoria was heading towards something resembling a normal state election, sacking an unpopular premier six months out from the poll would be a rational political response.

The state government is approaching the end of its third term and many voters, the end of their tether. After nearly three years in the job, Allan has not connected with enough people in the way Labor hoped she would. If published polls are an accurate guide, her leadership is a weight on her party’s vote.

The problem